Post Monday, 23rd August 2021, 09:53

feature request: give staff of Asmodeus +Summonings

This is a feature request: to give the staff of Asmodeus a summoning spell enhancer in addition to its current effects.

It comes from two things that are currently happening in crawl:
  • the first is that artefacts are now (more) allowed to have spell enhancers, for example with the elemental staff having +Earth +Fire +Air +Ice (an overbuff imo), the amulet of air having +Air (fun imo), and randard robes having archmagi (excellent imo, especially now that I won't have to wear-id all of them)
  • the second is the removal of staves of energy, which leaves a lot of my characters without any good 'default' equipment in extended. I used to wield staffs of energy by default and swap when I really wanted a spell enhancer or to kill things without using mp. If the staff of Asmodeus had a Summoning enhancer it would be pretty decent endgame equipment for summoners, especially since it's guaranteed to spawn.

Giving the staff of Asmodeus +Summoning would be thematic because it's already a staff that summons stuff. It being +7 makes it less bad for hitting stuff (though admittedly it would have to be +18 or something similarly absurd to be actually good for hitting stuff).

As a thought I had whilst writing this: it would be pretty cool if the elemental staff could be guaranteed to spawn for the same reason; it would give a lot of mages something to wield that's good enough to not have to think about weapon swapping the whole time. It could be put in Cerebov's domain, Coctus, or even a randomised Hell endvault (with the same quirk as Damnation, that it's allowed to spawn elsewhere [since the elemental staff vaults that can spawn in the Depths are fun] and in that case it's replaced with a staff randart). If that's done is would be good to nerf it though, since its currently really really good.

I don't play extended much TBH, and two-thirds of the extended I do play is bcrawl extended (because it's shorter and spicier), but I just opened up an old character (Barachi Ice/Summoner^Sif) who was waiting for me in the vestibule of Hell with a staff of removedness and a staff of Asmodeus and it made me a little sad/nostalgic.

Putting the elemental staff in Cerebov's domain in Pan with the bcrawl restrictions that you can't enter a Pan level unless you have a non-maxed-out XL or the Orb would be really really cool. It would feel great to get rewarded that way with an easier Zot at the price of doing bcrawl-style Pan.